


A Cheap Date

by HarbingerofGeek



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, M/M, Tendo Choi - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:43:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarbingerofGeek/pseuds/HarbingerofGeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before the first Kaiju attack, Tendo Choi tries to pick up a girl at a bar. He meets an off-duty firefighter instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cheap Date

The night before the first Kaiju attack, Tendo Choi was trying to pick up a girl at a bar. It was going badly. On a hunch, he'd tried to strike up a conversation with a tattooed brunette with glasses, but she was already drunk, rude, and incoherent. And clearly uninterested. He was trying to back away, but she kept moving toward him, telling him in no uncertain terms how little she wanted to sleep with him.

Tendo didn't want to sleep with an uninterested party, but he did really want to get laid with someone, at some point. It had been a long day, he had a condom in his pocket, and, besides, he quite enjoyed the entire ritual of sex. The flirting, the foreplay, the fucking--even the post-coital snuggling or food. He was pretty good at it, too. He could do things with his tongue, and goddamn if it didn't make the girls (and the guys) go wild. A few of his white gay friends had chided him for being the epitome of the promiscuous bisexual stereotype, but he didn't care. He was 21 and he wanted to have as much sex as he could in the time that he had.

"ME NO HABLA ESPAÑOL," the woman finished loudly, aspirating the "H" in her mangled attempt at Spanish as tiny droplets flew out of her tequila-saturated mouth. She made a shooing motion at him.

"Fuck you," he thought, and smiled at her.

Over her shoulder, he saw a man walk in and sit down alone at a corner table. Straight black hair shadowed his eyes, but didn't quite cover his cheekbones. Fuck. He was always a sucker for a good pair of cheekbones. The man was wearing heavy-duty work boots and a navy uniform with a scarlet and orange badge on his right upper sleeve. San Francisco fireman. The man put his head in his hands. 

"Two Sapporo," Tendo said to the bartender, and took the tall cans over to the table, popping the tabs with his thumbs on the way. 

"Bad day at work?" he said to the man. 

The man groaned and looked up just long enough to grab the beer. He drank, then looked at the can.

"How did you know I drink Sapporo?" he asked Tendo. 

Tendo shrugged, smirking.

"Fuck you," the man said. But he smiled. "I'm David Hatanaka. I just got off shift with the fire department." 

"Tendo Choi," Tendo responded. "I work on the ferries." 

"So which one are you?" David asked, leaning forward. "Japanese or Korean? Or is it both?" 

"Well," Tendo began. He wasn't used to this question happening at the beginning of things. "I'm mostly Chinese-Peruvian, actually. I have a Korean ancestor, quite a ways back on my father's side, and that's where I get the name Choi, but it's still mostly Chinese on that side of the family. And my mother, Beatriz Torres, she raised me on her own, and before my grandfather found us, all she knew was that my dad was Asian, and that's how I ended up with a Japanese surname for a first name. I'm still Tendo Torres on my passport. Haven't gotten it changed over yet." 

He was chattering. Shut up, Tendo. He drank the Sapporo nervously. 

David smiled and traced his beer's logo with his thumb. "You must get tired of having to explain that all the time," he said. 

"Yeah, I'm still a bit confused as to why my mother didn't just name me Miguel or Luis," Tendo said. "Where did you go to school?" He gestured at David's college ring.

"Berkeley, art history," David said. He grimaced. "And thus I became a fireman. You?" 

"Just taking a few classes here and there," Tendo said. "Despite rolling in the wealth that ferry work brings in, I prefer to save my money for hot dates with older Japanese men." He glanced at David, then hastily added, "I might join the Coast Guard -- you never know!" 

"I'm 24," David said. "Just letting you know, in case you need to find someone older to spend your money on." He smiled crookedly, and spun the empty can between his long fingers. 

"Oh, I don't know," Tendo said, heart pulsing dangerously close to his throat as he tried not to look at David's hands. "Three years seems like a pretty big age gap to me."

"You're something else, you know that?" David said. Then he leaned closer to Tendo again. "I can't believe I'm doing this, but do you want to get out of here?" 

"My place or yours?" Tendo asked.

"Yours, if that works," David said. "My housemates are assholes and are having a weekend-long party that I will no doubt have to clean up after my shift tomorrow." 

"You're lucky you have me to distract you," Tendo said. 

"You're lucky I'm gay," David said. 

***

Afterward, they lay, tangled and sweaty, on the air mattress in Tendo's studio. Tendo was tracing David's thigh with his right hand, and David had curled his right arm around Tendo's head, so that Tendo's cheek was on his bicep. David was smoking the last bit of a cigarette, and the smell of the smoke blended with the Sapporo, and a faint hint of eucalyptus.

David tilted his head back, and looked up at The Great Wave poster above Tendo's bed. He laughed. 

"So, as an art history major, what can you tell me about my poster?" Tendo asked, and laughed into David's chest. 

"I can see that you are a pretentious stoner with a vague Orientalist fetish," David said. 

"You bastard," Tendo said. "I was just trying to honor my fake Japanese heritage." 

David kissed him then, while Tendo's laugh was still warm on his mouth. Tendo tried to think of what to do with his hands, but he was at a loss with the distraction of David's mouth on his own, and David's hand on the back of his neck. This was so worth the price of those two beers, he thought, and grinned. 

"Shut up," David said, a little breathlessly, before Tendo could say anything. But a moment later, he pulled away and sat up. "Actually, are you hungry at all?" 

Tendo dove at David, and David held him at arm's length and rolled his eyes. "Not a euphemism, Tendo. I literally was wondering when you last had a meal." 

***

Tendo made rice seasoned with the furikake David kept in his backpack. He insisted that David critique his hashi technique as he fed him with what he claimed was the only pair of chopsticks in the house. 

"You will be a true hashi master when you can pick up that sesame seed," David said with mock solemnity. 

Tendo bit his lip with concentration as he chased the black sesame seed. 

"You idiot," David said. "Just feed me the damn rice." 

"Almost got it," Tendo said. 

"Seriously, Tendo," David said. "Rice. Mouth. Now."

Tendo straddled David and fed him obediently. "So greedy," he said. 

"I worked a 12-hour shift and then fucked you for the last couple hours!" David said. "I'm not a machine! I need food!"

Tendo fed him a few more bites and then set the bowl down behind him.

"Hey, hey, what are you doing?" David began as Tendo started kissing him again. "Oh god, don't do this to me." He reached around Tendo, blindly clawing for the bowl. Tendo just reached back and pushed it further away. 

"Nothing is free," he said. "One kiss per bite." 

"Fucker," David muttered. But he obliged. 

***

It was nearly 4 a.m. when David finally left the apartment. 

"If I'm lucky, I might get an hour's sleep before my next shift," he said. 

"I'm sorry," Tendo said, and tried to look it. 

"No, you're not," David said, laughing. "And I'm not either. This was exactly what I needed. I'll just crash tomorrow night." 

"Come by again," Tendo said. "I like a cheap date." 

"Next time, I'll be the one making you beg," David said, and Tendo felt a little faint. 

"Stay safe," he said. 

"Oh, I'm sure it'll just be another day of faulty smoke alarms and cat rescues," David said, and shut the door behind him on his way out. 

Just another day. Tendo brewed a cup of coffee and sat on the fire escape, watching the sky lighten over San Francisco.


End file.
